Author Archive: Rob Sass

Rob has been involved in the classic car hobby since restoring a Triumph TR4 in his parents' garage at the age of 16. He has written for Car and Driver, AutoWeek, The New York Times and FoxNews.com. Rob is the author of the book Ran When Parked: Advice and Adventures from the Affordable Underbelly of Car Collecting. He currently owns a Porsche 911SC, a Jensen Interceptor and a Triumph TR250.

Multi-national Ford Motor Company has — regardless of market — charted a fairly conservative path through the years. Unlike dedicated eccentrics SAAB, Citroën and even American Motors, it has produced few cars that could be fairly characterized as weird, but here are five from Ford (and its Lincoln and Mercury divisions) that still have us […]

The attrition rate of cars from the mid-disco to late Reagan-era is huge. And while we’d love to see someone somewhere driving any one of the cars on this list, in truth, we can’t remember the last time we saw any of them. Here are five of our favorite nearly extinct cars:

The 1990s had a fair amount going for it, in terms of both pop culture and automobiles. And while you can argue the merits of Nirvana and Green Day over Duran Duran and White Snake all day, nearly every car on this list is a vast improvement over its 1980s counterpart. Here are five of […]

Automotive designers have cribbing from each other since the dawn of the automotive era. Often it’s less obvious to borrow from far away than from your own backyard. Witness the countless European-inspired American cars we’ve seen over the years (like the 1989-97 Ford Thunderbird, a virtual copy of the 1977 BMW 630 CSi). Europe has been […]

With the big 50th anniversary of the Mustang, prices of the classic first version of the Mustang, the 1964½ (technically a 1965 model) through 1966, have been moving up. The best convertibles and fastbacks with the highest horsepower engines can bring well over $65,000 and there has been renewed interest in vintage Mustangs of all years. […]

Bad things often happen to good cars in the movies. Here’s a list of 11 scenes that still make car guys cringe with every viewing: 1970 Dodge Challenger (“Vanishing Point”): The ’70 Dodge Challenger (one of about five used for the film) meets a fiery end when the protagonist of the film (played by Barry Newman) drives […]

Station wagons are officially endangered in the U.S., and other than the Dodge Magnum and Cadillac CTS wagon, Richard Nixon was president when the last really cool one was built in America. But a quick look at the cars on this list might make you re-think any preconceived notions that wagons were all “Mom Mobiles” for the […]

Baby boomers are in full nostalgia mode as they contemplate their lost youth. And as the last generation that really bought into America’s love affair with the automobile, it’s natural that some of that nostalgia is of the four-wheeled variety. Here are five of the cars that baby boomers miss the most:

In this age of ultra-short product lifecycles where a three-model-year run unchanged is an eternity, it’s tough to imagine the same basic design being produced for three separate decades or more. Here are six cars well known to most Americans that all had tortoise-like life spans:

Some new cars sneak into the world under the radar with little baggage in the form of expectations (realistic or otherwise). Others are so heavily touted or anticipated that even the best can sink under the weight of unrealistic pressures. Here are some that, in addition to being under the microscope when introduced, suffered from […]